Quilting the Sun: Journey of a Play

By Grace Cavalieri

From my
house in West Virginia to the Wings Theater in New York City is
only a few hundred miles, but it took years to reach the
destination.

Preparing a
play for a professional reading takes longer than training for the
Olympics. With my play Quilting the Sun, the writing took ten
years. It took an additional two years, 2000-2002, to get the play
mounted so that producers could see it.

In 1990, the
Smithsonian Institute and the Visual Press of the University of
Maryland commissioned me to write a television screenplay inspired
by a magnificent quilt, made by former slave Harriet Powers, that
hangs in the Smithsonian. Harriet Powers’ quilts are closer
in appearance to Picasso’s work than to the story quilts of
the post Civil War South. (Another Powers quilt is owned by the
Boston Museum of Art.)

Although we
knew little of Powers’ life, we felt that her story should be
told. The facts we knew were these: She lived from 1837 to 1911.
She was married to Armstead Powers and had children. She sold her
quilt to Jennie Smith, a white schoolteacher from Athens, Georgia
for five dollars, half the asking price. Not enough, perhaps, to
fill a 90-minute program for public television, but it was an
intriguing start.

Initial
research was conducted in Sandy Creek, Georgia and Athens, where
the producers and I unpacked mildewed boxes in the courthouse
basement, beat down bushes to find the Powers’ shack and
pored over Miss Jennie’s letters at the University of Georgia
Library. We were guided by Gladys-Marie Fry, the scholar who
brought Harriet Powers to notice in her book, Stitched from the
Soul.

For two
years I met with the principals of the production team, submitting
draft after draft. My task was to imagine reasons Harriet might
have sold her quilt. It was her lifelong project and, after all,
she had always lived in poverty. Why did she need money at this
particular time, and need it so badly that she relinquished a
“spelled quilt,” one that (I imagined) God told her to
make? The only reason I could believe was that she did it to save
the life of her child. Essentially, she sold one baby for
another.

This quilt by
Harriet Powers hangs in the Smithsonian

The need to
buy white man’s medicine would be the reason for conflict, I
decided. I would build the universe around this and populate it
with characters. Five of them truly existed: Harriet Powers, her
husband Armstead, her son Alonzo, Jennie Smith and the headmistress
of the school where Jennie taught art, Miss Millie Rutherford. The
rest I would imagine.

One crucial
bit of information we had uncovered was that Harriet showed her
quilt at the “Colored Fair” in Athens in 1886. This
might have been where Jennie Smith discovered it. I narrowed my
time frame to a three-year time period and began to create the
world of Georgia in the South during the years
1883-1886.

The
producers wanted additional themes and subplots. Jennie
Smith’s brother Winston Wales was added, along with a
lynching and many other digressions from the quilt
story.

Left: Chris Dietz.
Right: Joan Green (center)
The two professionals actors took part in Quilting the Sun.
Photos by Grace Cavalieri

When the
play was complete, the search for funding began. Ten years ago, a
90-minute period piece on public television would have required at
least a million dollars; we couldn’t find that amount. The
producers began to spin off documentaries, hoping to recover the
hard-earned material for television use.

In 2000, the
copyright, according to the contract, reverted to me as the author.
I did not stay up late at night waiting for this to happen, but I
noticed the fact with interest, and spoke to a New York director
who had previously directed a play of mine. She suggested that I
rewrite the screenplay for the stage.

Plays rarely
come from film scripts, although it is common to go from theater to
film. But going from film to stage presents problems in scope,
point of view and the expansion of time. I didn’t know where
to begin. The screenplay had a large cast of characters. It could
take advantage of aerial views and panoramic scenes help tell the
story. Now I needed to think vertically, not horizontally,
compressing the story to fit a specific space with only the
characters necessary to tell the story. I felt like Harriet might
have felt ripping stitches out of her quilt.

The
preliminary reading was scheduled for September 12, 2001. I
approached the city on September 11 and, of course, immediately
returned home. That reading was rescheduled for November 7 at the
Columbia Branch Library on Tenth Avenue. This was in preparation
for the showcase reading on March 15, 2002 at the Wings Theater on
Christopher Street in the West Village. All these activities were
made possible in part by a Professional Development grant from the
West Virginia Commission on the Arts. Without this help, the pages
would still be sitting on my desk, and I would be no closer to
seeing my play in action than I was in 1980.

For the
November reading, I had whittled down the play to twelve characters
and removed all material but the basic story of Harriet’s
life. I thought I needed every single character on stage, and
couldn’t believe it when I was told that a play with twelve
characters wouldn’t find production at this time in history.
Somehow I was able to kill off three, but I held the line at
nine.

I
don’t consider my wastebasket a holy receptacle, but it was
becoming a character bigger than the others. In my office is a
trunk where I had 2,000 versions of this play in its various
guises. There were to be more.

Thanks to my
Professional Development grant, the director who had originally
encouraged me was hired to stage my reading. We sent invitations,
wrote personal notes, and made phone calls. On March 15, the small
theater in the West Village was filled for a showcase reading. The
audience liked what it saw and heard that day, and showed its
appreciation in a heartwarming way.

What did I
learn? That there is more writing to be done: Two of the
professional pundits at the viewing claimed the play was too
episodic. (I thought it was a patch-work quilt; I liked that
quality.) I will now rewrite to develop a “through-line of
narration,” stitching it even more closely. And I know that
when it finally reaches production, even more rewrites will occur
during rehearsals.

After the
March reading, four viewers requested scripts. Now, weeks later,
the phone does not ring, the mailbox is empty and the clock on the
wall is ticking. But I hear the voice of Harriet in my ear, telling
about selling her quilt: “I didn’t lose anything. I can
begin again.” And I hear my own voice answering, when asked
why I wrote this play: “Like Harriet, I know about
loss.”

And, like
Harriet, I have not “lost” a moment of my life writing
this play. I am sure that Quilting the Sun will receive a full
production. I’ll be going back to New York City soon. I know
it. As Harriet Powers said, “God tole me to make this
one.”

Grace
Cavalieri is a poet and playwright. She has had 18 plays produced
throughout the country, including three that received full
production in New York (at the Quaigh, WPA, and Common Basis
Theaters).